Four of the leading Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate came to Irvine on Thursday to tell Orange County business executives why each candidate was best able to defeat Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, who is seeking reelection in November. The forum, sponsored by the Industrial League of Orange County, was Rep. Bobbi Fiedler's first public appearance in the county since the Los Angeles County Grand Jury on Jan.

"A Region in Change, the Future of South Orange County" will be the topic of a series of panel discussions and special presentations today at Saddleback College. Sir Eldon Griffiths, a member of Parliament in Great Britain and president of the World Affairs Council of Orange County, will be the keynote speaker. He is a former journalist, having served as a correspondent for Time and Life magazines and as a columnist for the Washington Post.

During 1992, many Orange County residents wrote about their thoughts and feelings in articles for Orange County opinion pages. As we look back on the year, some of those thoughts are recalled in these excerpts. Representatives from 28 states recently convened at the Anaheim Marriott hotel. . . . Their mission was to get Orange County companies--and the jobs they provide--to relocate. And these visitors to our community didn't arrive empty-handed.

In a move to aid the battered U.S. defense industry, President Bush said Friday that he is eliminating federal fees paid by companies on the sale of arms and commercial goods developed from military contracts. The President made the announcement at a luncheon sponsored by the Industrial League of Orange County, a business organization in a region--Southern California--whose big defense industry has been hit especially hard by ongoing defense budget cuts.

It was not very long ago that California was creating hundreds of thousands of jobs a year just by being California. An ocean here, a mountain range there, sprinkle in the sunshine, and businesses knocked on the door. But toward the end of the 1980s, things changed. According to one estimate, in a five-year period nearly 900 plants and 118,000 jobs went elsewhere. Blue-chip firms started to move or to expand in other states.

We have heard a lot from politicians in recent elections about "family values." In last week's Times Orange County Lifestyle Poll, "The Embattled Family" respondents offered a far-ranging portrait of their real concerns, unfiltered by anybody's political agenda. No doubt it can be argued that personal satisfaction is a personal matter. Maybe so, but the poll suggests larger connections between the social and economic environment, and how people feel about their lives.

A Bechtel Corp. official conceded Wednesday that the company's proposed magnetically levitated, 300-m.p.h. train from Anaheim to Las Vegas cannot be financed and built privately as planned without the donation of publicly owned rights of way along Interstate 15 in the California and Nevada deserts.

Dennis J. Aigner, dean of the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management, has been elected to the board of directors at Mercury Savings & Loan in Huntington Beach. Since coming to UCI from USC in mid-August, Aigner has said he wanted to foster closer ties between the management school and the county's business world. "I see this as a very explicit way of putting into practice what I preach," he said Thursday. The S&L is the first county company to tap Aigner for a board position.

Mission Viejo officials still hope to receive a seat on the county's El Toro advisory council, even though the city's name does not appear on the county's newest list of panel members that is expected to be approved by the Board of Supervisors today. Despite the city's exclusion from the latest list, City Manager Fred Sorsabal said he still expects Mission Viejo to be added. Sorsabal said an aide to Supervisor Gaddi H.

Orange County has been included in President Bush's fast-changing campaign schedule that features a visit to Anaheim on Thursday for a speech to the employees of Odetics Inc., a high-technology firm that builds components for the space program. The President's visit was scheduled so quickly that the campaign did not send the usual notices to the Orange County Republican Party or the local GOP congressman, Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).